Mastering

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Mastering

The importance of a well-mastered recording cannot be overstated. That’s why United Recording Studios' Mastering combines the latest technology with the most gifted engineers to offer a superlative service for today’s internet world market. Our uncompromising mastering standards have played a major role in our rich legacy and have earned us significant recognition status in the recording world.

Notable Recordings

Our Mastering Engineers

Multi-Grammy winning and nominated engineer, Erick Labson graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University, where he earned his B.A. in Broadcast Electronic Communication Arts, with an emphasis on audio recording, mixing and production. He began his career in the late 1980's as in-house restoration and mastering engineer at industry leader, Sonic Solutions. In a few short years, the SonicSystem™ digital workstation quickly became the world standard for CD mastering. In 1992, Universal Mastering Studios was established and Labson was hired to help design and supervise the operation.

During the last 24 years, he has mastered thousands of albums and songs for artists such as Sublime, Gwen Stefani, Aerosmith, Usher, Boyz II Men, Shakira, The Who, Duke Ellington, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera. Notable major motion picture and TV soundtracks he’s mastered include The Voice, The Hurt Locker, The Matrix, Spartacus, House of Cards, True Blood, Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Fantastic Four.

Warren Sokol began his career as a freelance recording and mixing engineer at Living Head Audio Recording in Phoenix, AZ. This led to a contract doing all recording and mixing for the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, where he worked with talented soloists such as Doc Severinsen and Yo-Yo Ma. During this time, Warren honed his skills in audio production while also teaching at Mesa Community College and The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Science in Tempe, AZ.

Sokol started focusing on mastering, and in 2002 he founded Warren Ross Audio Mastering in Phoenix, AZ, where he grew his client base while also perfecting his mastering skills by working on hundreds of albums, EP's and singles.

In 2010, Sokol moved to Los Angeles as a temporary analog to digital archiving engineer at Universal Mastering Studios, and was soon brought on full-time as a mastering, production and tech engineer. Since then, Sokol has worked on hundreds of albums for artists such as The Band Perry, Imagine Dragons, The Colorists, The Moody Blues, Public Enemy, Method Man and the TV show The Voice. Sokol was also highly involved in the beginning of the Mastered For iTunes process, helping with workflow and setting standards for MFiT audio.

Studio Specs

About United Mastering

Located in a specially designed acoustic space, formerly the home of JVC’s mastering suite, United’s new studio features Lipinski L700A monitoring with JL Audio Fathom subwoofers, as well as a wide selection of popular headphones and earbuds. For computer playback and recording, the studio utilizes the SADiE system running Prism Sound's latest SADiE 6.1 audio recording and editing software across its mastering platform. Analog processing includes the Pendulum ES-8 Compressor, Dave Hill Titan Compressor/Limiters, SPL Passeq, Manley Massive Passive EQ Mastering Version, and Sontec Mastering EQ.

Acoustic treatment for United’s new suite was provided by Hanson Hsu at DHDI/ZR Acoustics (http://deltahdesign.com). DHDI have created a phenomenal, truly life-like and realistic acoustic experience, predicating the use of ZR Acoustics in a custom design layout.

United’s new Mastering Engineers are Erick Labson and Warren Sokol, formerly with Universal Mastering. Their combined discographies include decades of major albums from top artists in virtually all musical genres.